District police have confirmed that a body discovered in an apartment building ventilation shaft on Biltmore Street NW has been identified as a Clarksburg man who went missing after a New Year’s Eve celebration.

D.C. Police Spokesman Officer Araz Alali said the body of Michael Poe, 23, was found at 10:47 p.m. Wednesday.

Poe was celebrating New Year’s Eve with his friends at Shenanigan’s Irish Pub in Adams Morgan and had been missing ever since, his mother Leslie Poe told the Gazette Wednesday afternoon.

Alali said police got a report of an unconscious person Wednesday evening and found Poe unresponsive upon their arrival at the scene. Alali said Poe’s body was transported to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner where the cause of death is under investigation.

Poe and his friends had taken the Metro from College Park into Washington on Dec. 31, according to his mother. Poe and his friends split up shortly after 12:30 a.m., and he never returned from D.C., according to Montgomery County Police. His mother said his friends last heard from him when they called them on his cell phone about 2:30 a.m.

Poe graduated from Poolesville High School in 2007, and then enrolled at Virginia Tech, according to his Facebook page. He graduated from Virginia Tech in May.

On Wednesday, Poe’s increasingly worried family and friends were handing out flyers in different parts of D.C. and in Montgomery County trying to locate him.

“My son has never done anything remotely like this,” Leslie Poe said of his disappearance. “My husband is down there with friends, all down around the Adams Morgan area, Woodley Park, in Rock Creek Park.”

Poolesville residents described Poe as a good kid who hadn’t engaged in erratic behavior. He played golf and basketball while attending Poolesville High, and worked as a caddy at a golf course this fall, his mother said.